City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Katie V

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  1. Katie V
    Four of the last five recipe sales on the market were for 1.5 billion, and the fifth was for 1.9 billion. One of the last five crafted enhancements went for less than 2 billion.
  2. Katie V

    3D TV's and CoH

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Oliphantino View Post
    my 'old' HDTV went out... but it was under warranty, and i just got a full reimbursement of the old HDTV purchase price (!), so i am buying a 3D HDTV to replace it... it's hard to buy an HDTV nowadays that is not 3D... hehe

    it is possible to play CoH in full 3D?... if so, what do i need to know or get to do this?

    FYI, I will have the computer hooked up to the 3D HDTV directly via a port in the back of the HDTV... it will be a Samsung plasma HDTV using active 3D glasses system...
    People have played CoH in stereoscopic 3D, but since the game doesn't support it directly, the only way to get 3D is with a graphics card and drivers that can force 3D mode. I don't know any of the details; you might try asking in the Technical Issues or Player Questions forums.
  3. Katie V
    I can /gignore the Kamen Rider clone all I want to, but that doesn't make him any less of a copyright violation, and it certainly won't be a point in NCSoft's favor if they get sued for it.
  4. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
    Electric Armor has no self rez
    Doesn't need it, either. [Power Sink] is a pretty effective enemy lockdown power, especially in combination with [Lightning Field].
  5. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BlueBattler View Post
    I have to admit I wondered if it was Vanessa or the Clockwork King that Penny has received her training from.
    Run Agent G's arc.
  6. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Demonic_Spark View Post
    Okay maybe I am missing something here, but I am really not getting all the people that are not happy about the whole SSA about the Freedom Phalanx not being about us (player). I mean it's about them, if anything to me this comes off more of a set up to change the way things are, and the part we play as a Hero/Villain is the thing of being able to say "yeah I was there, I saw when it went down".
    This sort of story makes for a good book. It doesn't make for a good video game.
  7. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Red_Harbringer View Post
    Well, I'm very lost on all of the programs that were recommended to get it to work on Linux. When I went to look for a couple of them, I couldn't find the mentioned versions. I really think I'm going to need someone to pretty much take me by the hand and walk me through it :/
    Which ones are you having trouble with? Perl and either wget or cURL are almost certainly almost installed; Wine and Unrar should be available through your package manager. XML::Simple and Xdelta 1.1 may need to be installed manually, but in both cases, it's a very simple procedure.

    Knowing which distro you're using will help us guide you; the only thing that "KDE 4" tells us is that you're not running Ubuntu.
  8. Katie V

    SSA6 is up

    POST-ACTION

    The story is shaping up like something out of a Shakespearean drama. Perhaps they mis-titled the arc?
  9. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lycantropus View Post
    The Random Number Generator in this game tends to get stuck running a bit high sometimes.
    Correction: every true random number generator tends to get "stuck": it's the nature of random numbers that they contain what a human would consider unexpectedly long sequences of the same thing. The streakbreaker is there to turn true randomness into something players consider random.
  10. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lycantropus View Post
    I'd even like to see a few 'roving citizens' (in that they're just there wandering around the base like in missions, around town, in Portal Corps, etc..)
    Citizens don't "rove", they follow pre-specified paths laid down by the developers. Adding them to bases would require developing an interface to let players specify those paths, and even then, it doesn't always work out right (see the history plaque near the train station in Kings Row, or the citizens walking through walls in Portal Corps).
  11. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by RogerWilco View Post
    Never thought about it that way. I'm a new player and I made a Robotics/Time Manipulation Master Mind just because it worked well for the background of the character.
    I understand that with Robotics I'm on the strong end of the MM spectrum, how does Time Manipulation fit into it?
    My bots/time is only level 12, so I can only speak from the theory point of view, but Time Manipulation should be a strong secondary for Robotics. Instead of having three key powers (Acid Mortar, Poison Trap, and Seeker Drones) each on a 45-second recharge, you have a number of powers on fairly quick recharges, so you'll be more active. It gives up Traps' massive regen debuffs, but gains a variety of crowd-control and buff powers.
  12. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Quasadu View Post
    A buddy of mine reported a Drizzt clone a few nights ago and got a GM as well. We just figured it was a slow night...
    I got the same thing when I reported a Kamen Rider clone a few months back. I guess it's a good thing that I decided not to report the Spider-man parody I saw as I was logging off last night.
  13. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SuperOz View Post
    Hi everyone.

    Every once in a while I'll post a little thread asking about the technical limatations of this game's engine and what it can and can't do (though the recent surprises in four-legged rigs and power animations have rather surprised me).

    What I'm curious about are what constitutes an animation and what is a graphics effect. I'll give an example. For me, force fields in this game, regardless of color, tend to have a milky swirling effect that if I look at it too long seems to induce a little naseua so I do my best to avoid it. However, in what I'd call more 'modern' games (in the sense that the game has been developed in the last five years or so) I've seen force fields represented by a clear but distorted visual like a funhouse mirror. This also crops up in air distortions (to simulate moving very fast) as opposed to the only effect I can think of, which is the Afterburner effect for fly.

    So is one a graphics effect or animation? And if so, is it an impact on a game's system in terms of frame rate or something optimised for the game engine which it resides in?

    I'm only a player of games as opposed to a student of them, and what I consider cutting edge graphics may not be what I think they are. Any and all responses would be welcome.
    The simplest way to distinguish between an animation and a graphic is that an animation changes the shape, position, or orientation of an object, while a graphical effect only changes its appearance. This is a highly simplified description, and misses some things (such as particle effects, billboarded effects, and the like), but is a good rule of thumb. Which one takes a more powerful system depends on the details.

    The distorted forcefield effect you describe is a type of graphical effect known as a "shader" (probably a fragment shader), where, instead of simulating physical reality to figure out what color something is, the graphics card runs a short computer program. Shaders permit all sorts of fancy graphical effects, but they demand more computing power than traditional methods, and graphical hardware didn't support them back when CoH was being developed. Shader effects are starting to appear widely in City of Heroes (Ultra Mode graphics make heavy use of them), but since they aren't supported by all the hardware that CoH does, the developers can't use them for core features (such as power effects).
  14. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by blueruckus View Post
    I've been on this for a long time. I asked about this at the Pax Prime Panel QA last year and was given some excuse along the lines of "it's not as easy as just porting over the gun model... but, maybe.". It really sounds to me like "there's not enough demand to make it worth our time.".
    Porting weapons to SoAs isn't as easy porting between, say, Beam Rifle and Assault Rifle. Huntsmen have two "rifle melee" attacks, Pummel and Bayonet, and the animations for those need to be taken into account when selecting weapon models for them.
  15. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nericus View Post
    Excalibur has been portrayed as both a two handed "Conan" sword and as a broadsword in various fictions over the years. If I remember correctly, it is supposed to be a broadsword which is what Ms. Liberty is wearing.
    Excalibur is typically portrayed as an arming sword, around 30 inches long. That toothpick she's carrying in Pocket D can't be more than 18 inches.
  16. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
    So nobody's seen this?
    I think this bug is also affecting the ITF cutscene, causing an...interesting...portion of Romulus's anatomy to proclaim its Nictusness. If it's the same bug, it's been going on for months or more.
  17. Katie V
    My congratulations to the art team for creating such a wonderful costume set.

    My condolences to the art team for creating a costume set that Marketing has decided won't get the use it should.
  18. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SerialBeggar View Post
    I can't even get the geyser at the bottom of the Ski Chalet to fling me back up to the top of the ski slope with any reliability. Unless I tilt my view a certain way, I'm always slamming my face into the rocks.
    That's not surprising: there isn't a straight shot from the bottom to the top. You need to move slightly back as you go up to avoid those rocks, but not so far back that you run into the ski slope.
  19. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
    Well at least I can now plan to blow 10,000 Paragon Points to get the Black Wolf tomorrow then.
    That'll get you, at best, a 50% chance at one. For reasonable levels of certainty of getting one, you're looking at around 100,000 points.
  20. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by WanderingAries View Post
    What's the line?

    Redundant backups are rather redundant until the primary And secondary fail.
    The industry standard is two backups: one on-site backup for easy restoration, and one far enough off-site that a disaster can't destroy both backups (or if it does, you're not in any position to care).
  21. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sermon View Post
    You only have a 34% chance if you get a very rare. You many not even get a very rare.

    I am not sure why Z posted these numbers without also telling us the chance of getting each tier, since it makes the rare and very rare numbers practically useless.
    Arcanaville already worked out the distribution of card types: see http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Super_Pack
  22. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
    Before tomorrow's launch of the first Super Pack: Heroes and Villains, I wanted to share the breakdown of the odds of getting each item in the packs. This should be considered final and official.
    Could someone check my numbers here? The odds I'm getting for the black wolf are, frankly, absurd.

    Odds of getting a Very Rare card in a super pack: 79/100 (from here)
    Odds of getting a black wolf from a VR card after getting all three Elemental Order parts: 1 in 192. (Actual odds of getting the wolf from a VR card are slightly worse, since you've got a slight chance of getting the wolf while the costume parts are still in the rewards table.)
    Odds of getting a black wolf pet from a super pack: 79/19200, or about 0.41%

    Plugging this into my binomial-distribution spreadsheet gives a 50% cost of 169 packs and a 99% cost of 1116: that is, 50% of players who want a black wolf pet will need to open at least 169 super packs to get it, and one person in a hundred will need to open 1,116 or more.
  23. Katie V
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
    I want to start by saying that I've always been a defender of the Shadow Shard and the geysers as a method of traversal. Even back in the day before we had jet packs, even back in the day before we had the cop-out teleporters, I've always felt that it was a good idea that people just needed to give a chance to and maybe just get used to.

    But even I can't defend those things any more. I don't know if game physics have been tweaked or everyone having Hurdle and Swift is throwing trajectories off or if I never ran into all the broken ones, but I have to say that it's becoming apparent to me that the geysers simply do not work.
    I'm reasonably familiar with how the geysers "feel", having spent hours bouncing around the Shadow Shard, so I went there to check this out. Their behavior has changed: with no movement powers other than Swift and Hurdle active, they're shooting about 10% long/high. Adding Combat Jumping boosts that to around 20%, but it also gives you outstanding air control: you can make hairpin turns to land back where you started, or cancel your forward motion if you're about to overshoot your target. With Inertial Reduction active, they shoot about 50% long, but they've always done that.

    I suspect this is a side effect of the physics engine change that briefly nerfed knockback/knockup: the geysers were tuned for the old physics engine, and haven't been re-aimed for the new one.
  24. Katie V

    DFB support AT?

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by VKhaun View Post
    10) Hydra Boss Power = Recall friend to grab them from the hospital? Or maybe one of the debuff toggles to make the heads go down faster...
    If I'm remembering the layout of the map correctly, it's faster to run back from the hospital than it is to wait for the animation time of Recall Friend.
  25. Katie V

    Quick downloader

    POST-ACTION

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Anrita View Post
    They said they wouldn't, but apparently they are. After looking around the internet, it seems many people have complained about this, and there's even legal action being taken. Sigh....

    On a different note, I advise against using the "Check For Updates" option now that I've tried it. Right below it is a "Repair (Consistency Check)" option that's almost as fast and can save you the trouble of having to wait for the downloader twice. (After the first time, the game still said it needed to download Stage 2 and wouldn't let me past the character selection screen. Also, the progress stayed at 0%.)
    Once you've got everything downloaded and working, "Check for updates" should be faster. "Repair" always transfers complete files, while "Check for updates" transfers only the changes between what you've got and the latest version.